


"I'm nobody! Who are you?"

by zempasuchil



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-18
Updated: 2009-11-18
Packaged: 2017-10-18 13:14:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 480
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/189242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zempasuchil/pseuds/zempasuchil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He has to break the circle to turn it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	"I'm nobody! Who are you?"

**Author's Note:**

> _I'm Nobody! Who are you?  
>  Are you - Nobody - too?  
> Then there's a pair of us?  
> Don't tell! they'd advertise - you know!_
> 
>  _How dreary - to be - somebody!  
>  How public - like a frog -  
> to tell your name - the livelong June -  
> to an admiring bog!_
> 
> \- Emily Dickinson

__

He doesn't really like the war meetings, or the servants, or his armor. He really doesn't like the palanquin. It's a little like being at sea again, except there is no solitude, and the only waves he rides are the backs of the people.

-

Oh my _heart_ , she thinks. He feels an added weight to his burden: shield, weapons, sorrow. And he, he feels the weight of responsibility for everything. For all this. And he only has his own strength to shoulder it.

They are leaving their childhood along with their elders. They are leaving their elders, because they must go on to become them, because they cannot become them ultimately: because they must do better, they must not fail in the end. They must not forget.

-

West, East. Occident, Orient. Up is down and down is up - beauty below me, beauty beside me, beauty above me. Beauty within me. They have built these castles in the air. Now we must put the foundations under them.

-

 _The only way to regain my honor is to find the Avatar._

The world turns in circles, here he is back where he started, looking for absolution in the Avatar. But his honor is much harder to earn now, because it depends on only his own strength and not their weakness.

Now he knows what Iroh means when he says humility is the lowest a man can feel and the highest a man can be. And still, there is so much he never learned. He must remember.

-

The Avatar. The Avatar. The Avatar.

He floats, disconnected, hearing voices, feeling blind, feeling empty. The scar - the scar on his back - his chakras - he feels for a thin thread, for an inner layer, listens for an unfamiliar voice - but there is nothing. The voices, they are all familiar they are all known to him and he will never have anything more than this.

The Avatar. The Avatar.

The name burns him and with each wince the sound fades.

Avatar.

Silence.

But he is still there. He is still the only one they have.

-

Maybe it is best if we leave our castles without foundations, Aang thinks. Air is all he trusts to keep him afloat.

-

The world turns in circles. Nothing is ever the same (his scar, his guilt, his abandonment) but it is always closer than we'd like (his scars, his pride, his temper). All these things brought him around the world's circle over years and years back here before the Firelord. He would not kill his father. He knew as he stood there just as he had always known, because he couldn't, he didn't have it in him. He had something else, and they would call it weakness but he once called it love.

But if he knows anything it is change.

Zuko knows now: he has to break the circle to turn it.


End file.
